Presidential candidate and sentient sac of millions of spiders Donald Trump—literally more spiders than you’ve ever seen—does not have a coherent stance on cybersecurity. In his business ventures, though, his cybersecurity record sucks. Trump has failed to encourage policies to prevent large-scale data breaches at the hotels that bear his name. Read More >>

The US Department of Defense launched a new programme last week, “Hack the Pentagon,” to reward hackers for pointing out security flaws in some of its public-facing websites. It’s a bug bounty, the same kind of programme that most big tech firms use to encourage hackers to help instead of harm. The programme budget is $150,000 (£106,026), so rewards will be small, especially compared to private bounties. Read More >>

The US government used the All Writs Act in a failed attempt to make Apple write software that would weaken its security to help unlock a seized iPhone. That case was vacated this month, after a dramatic public battle. But the US government is still using the All Writs Act to corral tech companies, including Google. Read More >>

FBI vs. Apple is over. At least round one, anyway. The US government has confirmed that it was able to get the data off the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook without Apple, and it is dropping the lawsuit compelling Apple to write security-weakening malware. Read More >>

John McAfee wants to run for president on the Libertarian ticket. He may or may not make that happen. But either way, he has some rather non-Libertarian ideas about cybersecurity. Namely, that all terrorist plots can be detected with the right technology. Read More >>

The company reportedly helping the FBI access the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone data isn’t a household name in the US, but its data-extraction tools are all over the country. Cellebrite has been quietly helping US law enforcement bulk up its arsenal of surveillance gear for years. Read More >>

Apple has introduced its most ambitious health service yet, an open-source app development platform called ‘CareKit.’ It’s basically a way to help people keep track of their medical treatment, and to share information with doctors remotely. Read More >>

President Obama celebrated attending SXSW this year by doing the most SXSW thing ever: an interminable and substance-lite keynote discussion. Obama talked with Texas Tribune editor-in-chief Evan Smith about the current encryption debate—but admitted his stance boils down to “I’m not a technical expert, but let’s not be absolutists about this whole ‘backdoor key’ thing.” Read More >>

The US Department of Justice just responded to Apple in the ongoing court battle over what Apple must do to help the FBI unlock an iPhone—and the response is a 43-page document with an argument that can be summarised as “Apple is being a baby.” Read More >>

I wrote a post about Disney’s efforts to market Zootopia to furries last week, and I really pissed off some furries by describing the community as “people who like to roleplay as animals for sex reasons”. The following missive is an email I received from a furry named Brooke, published with her permission: Read More >>